


Lo sai che sta piovendo perché ci stiamo lasciando

by innominecarbohydrates



Category: Eurovision Song Contest RPF, Festival di Sanremo RPF
Genre: Angst, Bad English, English, Hurt No Comfort, I don't even know anymore y'all, Multi, One Shot Collection, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Sad Ending, You Have Been Warned, but more probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 12:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 5,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22776646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innominecarbohydrates/pseuds/innominecarbohydrates
Summary: A collection of sad, sad oneshots for my own angst!fest challenge, also the first time I'm writing in English, to sum it up: life's cruel and everything is a mess.
Relationships: Ermal Meta/Fabrizio Moro, Ermal Meta/Silvia Notargiacomo
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Everything started with [this ask](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/innominecarbohydrates/190067501069).  
The rest is VAFFANC*LO CALLIOPE!
> 
> (The title is a line from Ermal's Nove primavere, by the way)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a guardian angel!AU.

Fabrizio was dead. Literally, to be honest.

And he was dying a second time, lying on the dusty floor of that abandoned apartment, non-existent air that was being sucked out of his lungs, squeezing him and his resistance, his will to keep living even if he had recklessly consumed all the time he was given.

His skin was blackening more and more, cracking like it was rotten; he felt his eyes burning but couldn’t cry nor even sigh out of guilt, because he had lost everything a second blessed time and it was all his fault, obviously, a second time again.

All he had to do would have been monitoring the person he was given to guard, as his task to redeem his suicidal soul was to spend half the life he threw away by protecting another poor soul like him, preventing him or her from doing his same mistake.

Ermal wasn’t one of those simple souls Fabrizio encountered even when he was still alive. His demons were strong, interweaved to his bright will to live, menacing to eat it all away one day or another. They had a deep origin, one Fabrizio knew couldn’t do anything to relieve his guarded from. He didn’t even know what to properly do to guard someone as a temporary guardian angel, as he decided to consider himself, so he kept wandering around, and giving an eye to Ermal sometimes. He had a new type of freedom, he intended to enjoy it until he could.

Until Ermal took his belt and fixed it to the curtains’ pole, then placed a chair under and climbed on it.

He was about to put the leather noose around his neck, his eyes emotionless as never before, when he suddenly felt pulled by his back and fell down.

«Hey, you alright? The heck were you doing?», a sudden voice asked him, not leaving Ermal the time to elaborate what was even happening, why was he in someone’s arms, from which he felt he could fall on the ground by any second.

He managed to come to his senses enough to give that person a glare. «Who the hell are _ you_?»

That guy answered, not leaving him: «I’m Fabrizio, I’m your neighbor. Your door was half opened and while I was going out, I saw you trying to die, sorry if I saved your ass».

Sarcastic, and yet he had never let himself getting Ermal off his hold.

It was the first lie.

There followed many others.

Ermal, focused only on his studies and his inner demons, didn’t really keep attention on who else was living around him, in his same building, attending his same lessons or even his family, the one he left somewhere. As he himself told Fabrizio, stating they were just ‘away’, nothing more.

And Fabrizio, turned human even if he was prohibited to do so, didn’t ask him more, knowing too well that kind of answers and what they used to hide, since they were the same he used to give before going to that bridge, before giving up to his feeling of deep sadness and being useless.

He wouldn’t have let Ermal do the same. There were still too much dreams and light in his eyes, in his words, that were practically screaming him he wanted to live; all he need to do was understanding it.

«It’s getting absurd how I can’t get rid of you, y'know?»

Little by little, Ermal gifted him sharp observations and crooked smiles; Fabrizio kept telling him lies about who he was and what he was doing to live, but never about what he thought of him.

«Until you won’t tell me you threw that belt in the trash can, I’ll keep annoying you as long as I want, y'know?»

Ermal never asked anything more Fabrizio answered him. He just could guess his anxiety blocked him, at start, then that he wouldn’t want to get bothered with another person’s dramas, and it was obvious to guess why; then he got another idea. The fact that somehow he could have felt they were kindred souls, apart from the fact that he was still alive and Fabrizio, well, wasn’t. But that idea stayed in the air until he found the courage to tell Ermal by voice what he _ really _ was thinking of him, of the two of them.

Ermal didn’t push anymore him away as he tried to do the first times. Instead, he pulled him closer, and gifted him a kiss with all the fear and wanting that he finally found the courage to feel again.

That was just the start of his ruin.

Falling in love was even more prohibited of turning human, but Fabrizio couldn’t help himself, nor care enough even of that rule, being still too human to fully accept he didn’t belong anymore to that world. The world Ermal finally decide to live into and never leave before his time would have come. He managed to accomplish his mission, after all.

«You’re probably the first reason I want to wake up every day after», Ermal revealed him, safe in his arms, eyes glistening of a tenderness Fabrizio never thought would have ever seen in him, and still it was there, making him even more alive than those other days he started to smile again, and made him feeling like he was alive again. There was a hole in his soul that not even a fake material appearance would have completed, he knew it well and felt it day by day, but not when with Ermal. He hoped they could have stayed like that forever.

But Ermal couldn’t depend on him all his life, not even with that belt thrown away from his balcony one day they took coffee together and Ermal asked him about a short trip to the sea on that weekend, but Fabrizio had to lie to him about going to work and told him the truth he would have loved it, and then it all crumbled on him, in the place he flew to hide.

Blackened crumbling skin: the first sign that things were going bad. Fabrizio could keep it hidden when pretending to be human, but not when he left that masquerade. And now he couldn’t sustain it no more.

And so he was dying again, condemned because he loved the human he had to guard, and the fall was inevitable for a guardian angel who kept feeling and wanting as he was still human.

All he wanted was at least to say Ermal goodbye, too coward to admit he regretted his past life decisions, because if it wasn’t for them, for his own foolishness, too quick in judging himself, he could have even met him, they could have had a life together – one that wasn’t half built on lies, and what kind of angel lies? He couldn’t fit even in that world, for sure.

Fabrizio thought he heard Ermal screaming in the distance, but it was too late to think about it more, that he disappeared exactly as he lived: with no one noticing that, and the shadow of a single teardrop in the middle of a dusty cold floor.

* * *

Ermal thought he was about to die.

The feeling was of a wing ripped out from his back, but it was impossible, for humans don’t have wings. And yet he was kneeling on the floor, aching in stern pain, a hand gripping on his shoulder.

He almost fainted, but managed to reach the sofa, and slept the pain over.

He didn’t think to search for Fabrizio after two days he didn’t come knocking at his door.

Knocking at Fabrizio’s instead, he met with a surprise he didn’t expect.

«No Fabrizio lives here», answered the boy who lived next to him. It was a family of four people, that Ermal never met. Fabrizio never brought him to his home, actually.

Ermal almost got crazy in finding who he really was, since he never told him his last name, even.

Discovering he was a boy who died at his age twelve years before, and whose tombstone was empty of flowers, didn’t make him feel any better, or sure.

Ermal fell sitting on the ground, looking at the small photograph of Fabrizio. Couldn’t think of anything.

Just feel a strange cool breath on his arm, that made him turn around, but no one was there. And he foolishly expected to see the man in the rain-ruined photo, but there was nothing. Nobody.

But Fabrizio was there, instead, and was silently crying as Ermal started to do in that precise moment, but he couldn’t be seen anymore, not even in what was his last moment before dissolving forever.

So he disappeared, leaving Ermal drying a tear by himself, with that ghost of a caress he didn’t feel on his cheek, nor the whisper of a goodbye he couldn’t have listen to.

All he had to do now was going on alone, but Fabrizio couldn’t hear him anymore.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's mentions of 2019 Capodanno in Musica, so it's set in 2020 basically.

The telephone rings, and Fabrizio feels every second more stupid for the idea he got when he found the invitation card in his mail.

«_Bizio?_»

But there’s no time for resentment. One shot, it will fade soon, and he’ll return to distract the pain with his music once again. «Hey, just got your invitation. I called to…well, to congratulate.» Fabrizio clears his throat. «So, congratulations.»

«_Ah…yes. Thank you._» Ermal hesitates too, as he suddenly forgot the reason Fabrizio called him, but that’s impossible.

«_It’s very important to me_», he says, and for a moment Fabrizio is back again in that backstage in Bari, in a not very cold New Year’s Eve night, when everybody was cheering on the stage but not him, not Ermal, who left his family’s dinner not to sing with him, not to tell him he missed him – that he missed _ them _– well, he actually said that, but it looked like a mere formality. As they never shared more than a hug in front of the cameras not even half a year before.

Fabrizio felt all the cold that wasn’t in the air, then, when Ermal told him the reason he made an exception to his gap year, the reason he went downstairs and in the crowded square just to tell him in his face that he was going to get married.

And he wanted him to know that before any other, because he deserved that – Fabrizio as well as Ermal himself, because they needed to put a stop to…whatever was their relationship, if it wasn’t including the moments when they let anybody else see what was between the two of them. He thought about it very well, during that long period of time when Fabrizio didn’t receive any calls from him, and he has been the one who complained he never called him back. It seemed to him an eternity, thinking it back, when he told him that truth in form of a joke. That request, actually – _ don’t leave me alone, not now. _

He left him alone before Fabrizio could do that first. That was the reason he got away before the New Year’s countdown, for once that he wanted to stay on stage along the crowd, deceiving himself with the thought of visiting Ermal after, just to wish him and his family a happy new year, and maybe – _ finally _ – putting a stop to all his fears, to all Ermal’s doubts, and finally say yes – _ yes I will stay, yes I won’t leave you alone, I will never leave you alone anymore. Even if no one will ever know it, even if it will be more difficult and painful than any other thing we had to face. _

He left the celebrations after Ermal did, with only the need to get in the car, leaving as fast as he could, molten lead in his stomach to cry all over the road he would have taken back to Rome.

«_Your words, I mean._»

And then Ermal speaks again from the phone, waking Fabrizio from his painful, suppressed memories and feelings. «_It’s important to me – that you’re happy with this. It’s really important, Fabrì._»

And Fabrizio smiles a bit, after all, because it’s still his “little brother” who’s talking, and giving him names, and going to celebrate the best day of his life with the _ ragazza paradiso _ he so longed for. A reconciliation is always something worth being happy for. «And you being finally happy it’s what’s important to me, Erm.»

But the heart aches, and what he wants rushes back from the recess of his brain, who couldn’t really keep to himself anything, since it’s so damaged from all the useless suffering Fabrizio subjects himself whenever he can. «Only…we already planned the new tour, and called the stadiums, and I can’t really cancel the concert that overlaps with your wedding. They would kill us all if we do that once again.»

«_Oh._»

«Maybe I’ll send you another embarrassing video as the last one, eh?» Fabrizio even tries to crack a laughter in his voice, just not to crack a cry.

«_Yeah, maybe. It would be satisfying for the gossip journalists, I’ll bet that_», Ermal jokes, and Fabrizio gets reassured. A bit.

«Well…keep good, my friend. You’re a very lucky man, remember that.»

It’s painful to Fabrizio admitting those words, but he actually feels better after unloading that burden.

But he still doesn’t wait Ermal’s answer to hang up his call.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the guardian angel!AU's sequel.  
Sort of.

«I thought you died», Ermal says, tears in his eyes – tears he so longed for, since that day his heart closed the veins and all the routes to make his pain flow, and lighten his burden, and relieving him a bit by leaving with his tears.

It didn’t happen until Ermal saw Fabrizio again, until he felt him solid under his fingers, against the lips he pressed on his forehead so hard, to make  _ him _ feel how much he missed him.

Fabrizio smiles to him, in that crooked but reassuring way Ermal learnt to recognize. It was  _ their _ smile. He leaves a light caress on his cheek, curing this way all the invisible scars his non-spilled tears left on his skin.

And Ermal’s smile trembles a bit, following the shake that small touch caused to his body. Suddenly he wants to feel more of Fabrizio, he wants to make sure he’s as real as he appeared to him, and it’s not another of those lucid dreams he keeps doing, in nights when he cries and days where he can’t.

«I missed you», he says, and for a while he’s even convinced it’s his own voice but he doubts it’s actually Fabrizio speaking. «I missed you so much», he adds, and it’s not Fabrizio speaking, Ermal’s just bathing in the vision of him, and puts a hand on the one with whom Fabrizio keeps caressing his face, lacing the fingers in his curls, sighing as he missed too those touches. It’s Ermal who talks, and it’s enough for both of them.

He doesn’t follow his reason and places an arm around Fabrizio’s waist, and makes both of them crash in a hug, so desperately wanted.

Fabrizio sighs so loudly that awakes Ermal from the thoughts that were distracting him. He doesn’t have wings on his back, he felt nothing he was weirdly expecting.

But it doesn’t matter. Ermal closes his eyes, resting against Fabrizio’s shoulder and his familiar scent and in his arms, and he’s at peace again, finally complete. The wing that was ripped from him has been given back.

He doesn’t even care for his wet eyelids, if Fabrizio keeps leaving those small kisses against his head, his neck. Ermal squeezes him a bit more in his embrace, not caring anymore of all the sadness he felt, of all that emptiness that doesn’t anguish him no more, now.

Until he wakes up, in a bed stained of sweat and his own tears, the ones he’s not able to cry during the day.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's set in an unspecified future, where they decided to come out.

«Open the door! Fabrizio, just open this door!»

_ « He’s not getting any recording session lately, no one we’ve asked wants to produce his songs anymore. » _

«Can’t we talk this through like the adults we are?!»

_ « Can’t you guess why? That’s because of you. » _

«Just go away, Ermal! I have nothing else to say.»

Fabrizio lets him choose all the insults and the questions he wants, then. It wouldn’t change anything, anyway.

The day they came out was the best and the worst of their life.

_ «They cut you out?!» _

_ «That’s none to get worried, for you.» Ermal kissed his frown away. «I can find other ways whenever I want.» And smiled. _

Fabrizio believed in that smile. He _ chose _ to believe in Ermal’s naive plan of getting a gap year so everything would come back to normal when he would have returned to work.

It didn’t happen, of course.

And so Ermal is sighing heavily behind that door. «Fabrizio, if you’re really leaving me as you said, at least have the courage to tell me in my face, not with a damn message on the phone!»

As he didn’t do the same when he admitted he felt…_more of a brotherhood _ to him.

Because calling it _ love _ makes Fabrizio even more scared and hurt of what he’s doing.

_ You didn’t complain, then_, he so much want to say, just to make it worse and make Ermal finally go away – but his voice, traitor, died right then, where his tears ended, not wanting to spill out.

He hears Ermal releasing a small sob against the other side of his house’s door. «Didn’t think I was of such less importance to you. _ For two damn years._»

And Fabrizio has to swallow both his pride and his despair. «Well, you got it now. I couldn’t go on lying to you.» _ To you, of all the people_, but his voice is still stuck in his throat, won’t add that pain to the pain.

Ermal’s sore breathing is fair enough. «Well, I understand. I understand it now.» A small, bitter laugh. «I hope all the times we fucked were useful to your inspiration, at least.»

_ If it wasn’t for me_, he’s saying, _ you’d still be in that pit looking for something you lost years ago. You yourself told me I’ve been the light to you, your mind, your soul. I opened mine to you, I gave you more and in less time of what I gave to people I’ve known for longer. And now you’re throwing everything away! _

_ Yes_, Fabrizio would answer, _ yes I am giving up on you, because you wouldn’t understand it by yourself; you’re not seeing that I’m devouring your muse, your reason of living, that you’d give up if I’d ask. How many months it’s been since you wrote your last song, Ermal? How much time passed since the last rejection of a new project of yours? I can’t get you used to this life of closing doors, too. I have to let you go, with you accepting it or not. With your hate, even. _

And that’s what he does.

Fabrizio gets away from that door, inside his house, ignoring Ermal’s soft crying, his pleads, his apologies, and all of his own too, those his heart is too weak not to let them closed in the dark of his conscience.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a Hunger Games!AU.

Ermal just heard a rustle between the bushes, saw a shadow beneath those trees in the distance. He saw the glimpse of a uniform – not their colour, not their District – he took the arrow, he took the shot.

He heard only Fabrizio’s scream, then.

And realized it wasn’t, in fact, someone of their District.

Didn’t realize who was exactly, until he saw the boy coming out of the woods, falling on the grass; on his face, the most genuine expression of surprise he’s ever seen.

Fabrizio’s voice was like a ripping paper in his ears, a terrible, terrible sound to hear. Ermal didn’t realize who it was.

Until Fabrizio came out from behind, rushing past him, completely forgotten of the animals just hunted for their meal – rats, he believed they were, but Ermal couldn’t remember anymore nor would want to.

Fabrizio completely forgot him, and rushed towards Niccolò.

Ermal didn’t know he let his weapon slip through his fingers until he heard the soft sound of it hitting the ground.

But it was just a glimpse; all of his focus was getting sucked by the vision of Fabrizio kneeling to the bleeding boy, taking him in his arms, speaking frantically – _ don’t talk_, and _ don’t move, just breathe, stay with me okay?, just stay awake Nic_, and _ everything will be fine, we just need to stop the blood _ , and _ Ermal help me goddammit! _

Ermal awoke like from a profound dream, from a headache that lasted years.

He rushed to the empty trunk in which they hid their possession and started searching, throwing things on the ground while keeping an ear on Fabrizio: _ it’s okay, Nic, you’re gonna be okay, it-it’s not that worse, Ermal…! _

_ I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said to the others where you were… _

_ Shh, it’s alright; we’re still here, aren’t we? _

_ But it’s my fau- _

Niccolò coughed. Ermal could just imagine it was blood.

«Ermal, get that bloody anything!!»

Soup, disinfectant, pills to purify water…no needles and strings to close the wound, nothing useful. He started pulling off his jacket to rip an arm out of it and use it as a bandage.

Niccolò’s breath was insufferable, it was the one of a dying man, impossible to mistake. «Fabrizio, could you sing _ that _for me?»

It was there that Ermal knew there was nothing else to do.

Fabrizio sighed, suffocating a sob. «Okay.»

He held Niccolò tighter in his arms, and started humming. Maybe he didn’t even want to pronounce the words, but eventually he did.

Ermal couldn’t see anymore because of the tears in his eyes, but proceeded to dry them without making a sound.

Fabrizio interrupted his singing, couldn’t do that for long.

He started sobbing quietly, then uncontrollably, his head falling on Niccolò’s.

Couldn’t make his fingers reach the boy’s blind eyes to close them.

Ermal did that for him, taking a deep breath.

The same Fabrizio took before signing his verdict. «Go. Away.»

Ermal just disclosed his lips, so much to say and so little – _ I’m sorry, I couldn’t know it was him, that’s what this game wants from us, please don’t send me away I have no one just like you, please don’t send me away from you _ –

«**_GO AWAY!!_**»

Ermal rose immediately to his feet, turned and never stopped walking, leaving Fabrizio crying over the body of his dead friend, leaving him alone as he told him to do.

He took his bow and dived deep into the trees, Fabrizio’s voice persecuting him, the lament of an animal who lost his cubs, of his own heart.

He didn’t stop even when his legs prayed him to, when his hands started bleeding for all the branches he ripped off his way – for all the tears he couldn’t spill.

He didn’t realize he wasn’t hearing Fabrizio’s voice anymore – it was in his ears, constantly. It would have stayed wherever he would have gone.

_ And may the odds be ever in your favor. _


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's set during Ermal's gap year.

_ Just call him! What are you still waiting for? _

And yet Ermal keeps eyeing his phone, as it could magically act on his mind’s command. Or magically disappear. He would prefer that option, actually.

If he hadn’t been such an idiot – if _ they_, because it was a two persons’ fault, there! – if they hadn’t acted as such idiots, he wouldn’t have had so many problems right now. He wouldn’t have to go around with another mask on; he could write, and sing, whatever he wants, without the constant thought of being _ misunderstood_, for better or for worse it’s not the matter. It’s both worse to him, if you ask Ermal.

And now he’s caught in a corner. All because of letting his stupidity – okay, his heart – wander. Taking roads he didn’t think he’d have taken again that fast.

And yet he’s waiting for the other to call him. Nice excuse the gap year, especially for someone who can’t stay away from doing all sort of things – especially to avoid his cowardice. Just like in this moment.

And then the bloody device rings, right when Ermal is about to take a step forward and literally take the matter in his hands; it’s Fabrizio calling, he can read it as well from his position, and he’s letting the telephone ring, on and on and on.

Until it stops.

And Ermal sighs. Another missed call.

Until the other will end his patience. Maybe he’s just waiting for that moment, so he could call him and rub it in his face, _ where was your "I’ll wait another eternity if it’s for you?", _ just another shitty excuse to have a reason lighter than his stupid fears to talk to him, to confront Fabrizio – and his own fear to take again that _ something _ in his hands that had hold _ nothing _ for a time he thought would have been eternal. It was a desperate thought, but more comfortable, in a way, than a relationship that strong as well as fragile as theirs.

And for how much Ermal loves Fabrizio, for how he learnt to love again in that way he can fully entrust himself to the other, he’s still too much scared by what he doesn’t know – and can’t control, not seeing the boundaries of it – to do that fatal step, probably until Fabrizio will lose his wanting to hear from him again, and will move on.

Regrets are better to handle than decisions. He’s kinda an expert on that.


	7. Chapter 7

«_I cannot do this, Ermal._»

Fabrizio picked up a really good day to break up with him: he caught the chance when Ermal called to greet him a merry Christmas.

«_I thought it well during this time we didn’t see each other. And I realized…I can’t give you what you expect_», he turned it out, probably giving in to his fear of telling him the truth.

Ermal just wanted to strangle him. At first.

What the hell was even that excuse? Now he could read into his mind?! «You’re just afraid, Fabrizio. Afraid of falling again in your past.»

«_Because you read into my mind, right, Ermal?_»

«You told me that, if you remember.» All he was scared of, in a matter of relationships. «You told me even that you wouldn’t be scared if it was me, because we work the same», Ermal said then, annoying tears forming in his throat rather than his eyes. «And you told me also that you had never been that happy before like those days you spent with me.»

A small sigh on the other line. «_Ermal…_»

«But don’t worry. I’m not pushing you to do anything you don’t want to do. Like keeping your word, for once. Or not deceiving others with your temporary attention.»

«_Ermal…!_»

«Have a nice Christmas, Fabrizio. At least your family deserves it.»

Ermal interrupted the call and threw away his phone, not bothering with anything anymore.


	8. Chapter 8

It was a nothing; a quick, absent-minded glance to the other side of street while Fabrizio was exiting the bar.

Ermal was laughing. For something clever, or just a nonsense told by the unknown person who was with him.

It was just a moment, so insignificant that his memory could as well remove it as he saw that, but Fabrizio couldn’t help but focus on it, his longing practically obliging him to freeze on his feet, in a quite ridiculous pose if you asked him.

But it was all he could get, by now, small instants in place of all those irreplaceable moments that were long gone, not from Fabrizio’s memory though, but who could say it was the same for Ermal’s? As Fabrizio could just cross the street, catch him in his arms and ask him _that_, plead him not to forget him, not to forget _ them_, what they had, and more of all that, ask him for more time, all because of his cowardice, that in his head has the name of a freedom who has actually long lost its original meaning, since he met that incredible man.

But he stays on his feet and lets Ermal and his definitively not memorable companion go, as Fabrizio allowed him to slip from his fingers all those days before, and resigns himself to get back to his life, alone with his useless, helpless desires, another time again.


	9. Chapter 9

_ Where are you? _

Ermal smiles, sings, keeps going with his work, whatever he wants, because he’s still alive, his career is still flying, his loved ones are okay and everything is fine, isn’t it?

_ Where are you? _

As he doesn’t glance at his phone one second too much.

As he still doesn’t prick up his ears whenever comes around the rumor that some other singer wants to duet with him, or may it be just another person who’s looking for him for whatever reasons.

As Ermal isn’t still looking for Fabrizio’s signs that he still wants him, or at least that he cares for him. Isn’t it stupid?

But that question is still haunting him.

* * *

_ Where are you? _

Where Fabrizio’s mind is, its owner doesn’t know it anymore.

He keeps distracting himself – his family, new events, new songs, anything that helps him in it – but the abyss is still there, sucking him into whenever it gets the occasion.

_ Where are you? _

Where Fabrizio’s heart is, is definitively in his chest; too bad that is cut in half. And one of the halves flew away before he could stop it.

And Fabrizio is too much scared to discover where it went. Too scared to face the truth, to take a decision, and completely change the balance that he managed to keep in his too messed up life – by him, of course, who else torments him better than his mind.

Ermal’s number is still on his telephone’s memory, the message he wrote still in the folder.

But Fabrizio’s fingers are frozen, and won’t still send it. He fears that he’ll lose Ermal, and yet he can’t draw himself closer to him again.

And so another day goes. And time flows by. And his fears draw closer to reality.

_ Where are you? _


	10. Chapter 10

Fabrizio sighs. «What did I do wrong, Ermal?»

_ Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. _ «Why are you supposing you’re the one who did wrong?», Ermal asks him instead.

And, «Stop playing the victim», he adds, but it comes out more sharp than he thought. He wanted to reassure him – _ we’re both on the same side, here, as we always have been _ – not load on his shoulders all the burden of their separation.

Fabrizio avoids his glance for a moment. _ It’s usually me who ruins everything_, Ermal predicts he’ll say, as he predicts another sharp but intended as gentle comeback from himself.

«I just didn’t expect we’d end what’s between us so calmly», Fabrizio says instead. «I feared I’d have cried», he adds, a glimpse of his well known crooked smile, the one Ermal couldn’t help but ask himself why anyone can’t find it lovely as he did, and still does apparently. «I feared you’d have cried – not that I think you’re not strong enough – only that…»

«You were worried about me», Ermal helps him with a smile, and a kind voice, a _ real _one. «I understood it.»

Fabrizio faintly laughs. _ I’m the worst at that_, Ermal can practically read it on his face.

He’s not the only one, though.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's mentions of Ermal erasing everything before New Year's Eve - the 'dodici' thing on his social networks, I mean, so even this oneshot is set in 2019.  
The song in the quote is Musica (e il resto scompare) by Elettra Lamborghini.

> _ …E anche se non mi hai detto mai “amore aspetta” _
> 
> _ Tutto quello che resta quando penso a te è _
> 
> _ Musica e il resto scompare _

Whatever remains of them, it’s their song.

Everybody’s asking when will they come back together with a new hit, but neither Ermal nor Fabrizio want to answer, actually. The official answer is that they don’t know, they already have projects, that don’t want to interfere with the other’s. The truth is that the less people talk, the better is for their personal worlds.

Ermal doesn’t want to be in a duo, he already records so many duets he lost the count. It was special, _ theirs_, trying to replicate that magic would be just an error, it would transform the meaning of it – _ all _ the meanings hidden inside those five words – in a commercial success and Ermal thinks some songs of his are already enough.

Or maybe he just doesn’t want to waste more hope and feelings and vital energy on a person who doesn’t want to wait, from the other side.

Little he knows what Fabrizio thinks about the question, but Ermal still doesn’t bother himself too much with wondering what’s inside his _ comrade_’s mind, _ not again at least. _ He had wasted half a year on that and almost all of his sanity, doesn’t want to repeat the experience, thanks. Doesn’t want to be tied or with a leash on when the other is free to wander, and as much as Fabrizio never put the things between them in those exact words, nor made he feel that way, Ermal still is starting to feel betrayed, as a string that gets cut after being told that what he was tied around was the most important thing in his life and he had the delicate task to protect it. A task he so foolishly accepted to fulfill, certain that it would have been the start of a somehow tepid rebirth. And for a while, it worked.

And then everything ended, the circle finally closed, way after the audience realized that, but it closed anyway. Ermal had been cut out, there was no more room for either of them in that circle, and whatever Fabrizio was thinking, that he was okay with that, could have gone easily and directly to hell.

All that remained him was a song, a great hit with an important meaning and a deep satisfaction nonetheless, but it was just that, the constant reminder of a mockery, so Ermal found it practically necessary to start all over again – by erasing everything. And what better time in the year to do that than its last days?

All that remains him, now, it’s just a song, one of his greatest hits, with an important meaning and a deep job satisfaction behind, but it’s just that.

Anything else, Fabrizio’s hugs, smiles and laughs as well, have just disappeared.


End file.
